Fang Seven nodded and closed his eyes.
Granddad raised the revolver as though he were lifting a huge boulder. The pressure of the moment made him quake.
Fang Seven’s eyes snapped open. ‘Elder brother . . .’
Granddad spun his face away, and a burst of flame leaped out of the muzzle, lighting up Fang Seven’s greenish scalp. The kneeling man shot forward and fell on top of his own exposed guts. Father found it hard to believe that a man’s belly could hold such a pile of intestines.
‘Consumptive Four, you’d better be on your way, too. Then you can get an early start on your next life and come back to seek revenge on those Jap bastards!’ He pumped the last cartridge into the heart of the dying Consumptive Four.
Though killing had become a way of life for Granddad, he dropped his arm to his side and let it hang there like a dead snake; the pistol fell to the ground.
Father bent over and picked it up, stuck it into his belt, and tugged on Granddad, who stood as though drunk or paralysed. ‘Let’s go home, Dad, let’s go home. . . .’
‘Home? Go home? Yes, go home! Go home . . .’
Father pulled him up onto the dike and began walking awkwardly towards the west. The cold rays of the half-moon on that August 9 evening filled the sky, falling lightly on the backs of Granddad and Father and illuminating the heavy Black Water River, which was like the great but clumsy Chinese race. White eels, thrown into a frenzy by the bloody water, writhed and sparkled on the surface. The blue chill of the water merged with the red warmth of the sorghum bordering the dikes to form an airy, transparent mist that reminded Father of the heavy, spongy fog that had accompanied them as they set out for battle that morning. Only one day, but it seemed like ten years. Yet it also seemed like the blink of an eye.
Father thought back to how his mother had walked him to the edge of the fog-enshrouded village. The scene seemed so far away, though it was right there in front of his eyes. He recalled how difficult the march through the sorghum field had been, how Wang Wenyi had been wounded in the ear by a stray bullet, how the fifty or so soldiers had approached the bridge looking like the droppings of a goat. Then there was Mute’s razor-sharp sabre knife, the sinister eyes, the Jap head sailing through the air, the shrivelled ass of the old Jap officer . . . Mother soaring to the top of the dike as though on the wings of a phoenix . . . the fistcakes . . . fistcakes rolling on the ground . . . stalks of sorghum falling all around . . . red sorghum crumpling like fallen heroes. . . .
Granddad hoisted Father, who was asleep on his feet, onto his back and wrapped his arms – one healthy, the other injured – around Father’s legs. The pistol in Father’s belt banged against Granddad’s back, sending sharp pains straight to his heart. It had belonged to the dark, skinny, handsome, and well-educated Adjutant Ren. Granddad was thinking about how this pistol had ended the lives of Adjutant Ren, Fang Seven, and Consumptive Four. He wanted nothing more than to heave the execrable thing into the Black Water River. But it was only a thought. Bending over, he shifted his sleeping son higher up on his back, partly to relieve the excruciating pain in his heart.
All that kept Granddad moving was a powerful drive to push on and continue the bitter struggle against wave after murky wave of obdurate air. In his dazed state he heard a loud clamour rushing towards him like a tidal wave. When he raised his head he spotted a long fiery dragon wriggling its way along the top of the dike. His eyes froze, as the image slipped in and out of focus.
When it was blurred he could see the dragon’s fangs and claws as it rode the clouds and sailed through the mist, the vigorous motions making its golden scales jangle; wind howled, clouds hissed, lightning flashed, thunder rumbled, the sounds merging to form a masculine wind that swept across a huddled feminine world.
When it was clear he could see it was ninety-nine torches hoisted above the heads of hundreds of people hastening towards him. The dancing flames lit up the sorghum on both banks of the river. Granddad lifted Father down off his back and shook him hard.
‘Douguan,’ he shouted in his ear, ‘Douguan! Wake up! Wake up! The villagers are coming for us, they’re coming. . . .’
Father heard the hoarseness in Granddad’s voice and saw two remarkable tears leap out of his eyes.
4
GRANDDAD WAS ONLY twenty-four when he murdered Shan Tingxiu and his son. Even though by then he and Grandma had already done the phoenix dance in the sorghum field, and even though, in the solemn course of suffering and joy, she had conceived my father, whose life was a mixture of achievements and sin (in the final analysis, he gained distinction among his generation of citizens of Northeast Gaomi Township), she had nonetheless been legally married into the Shan family. So she and Granddad were adulterers, their relationship marked by measures of spontaneity, chance, and uncertainty. And since Father wasn’t born while they were together, accuracy demands that I refer to Granddad as Yu Zhan’ao in writing about this period.
When, in agony and desperation, Grandma told Yu Zhan’ao that her legal husband, Shan Bianlang, was a leper, he decapitated two sorghum plants with his short sword. Urging her not to worry, he told her to return three days hence. She was too overwhelmed by the tide of passionate love to concern herself with the implications of his comment. But murderous thoughts had already entered his mind. He watched her thread her way out of the sorghum field and, through the spaces between stalks, saw her summon her shrewd little donkey and nudge Great-Granddad with her foot, waking the mud-caked heap from his drunken stupor. He heard Great-Granddad, whose tongue had grown thick in his mouth, say: ‘Daughter . . . you . . . what took you so long to take a piss? . . . Your father-in-law . . . going to give me a big black mule . . .
Ignoring his mumbling, she swung her leg over the donkey’s back and turned her face, brushed by the winds of spring, towards the sorghum field south of the road. She knew that the young sedan bearer was watching her. Struggling to wrench free of this unknown passion, she had a dim vision of a new and unfamiliar broad road stretching out ahead of her, covered with sorghum seeds as red as rubies, the ditches on either side filled with crystal-clear sorghum wine. As she moved down the road, her imagination coloured the genuine article until she could not distinguish between reality and illusion.
Yu Zhan’ao followed her with his eyes until she rounded a bend. Feeling suddenly weary, he pushed his way through the sorghum and returned to the sacred altar, where he collapsed like a toppled wall and fell into a sound sleep. Later, as the red sun was disappearing in the west, his eyes snapped open, and the first things he saw were sorghum leaves, stems, and ears of grain that formed a thick blanket of purplish red above him. He draped his rain cape over his shoulders and walked out of the field as a rapid breeze on the road caused the sorghum to rustle noisily. He wrapped the cape tightly around him to ward off the chill, and as his hand brushed against his belly he realised how hungry he was. He dimly recalled the three shacks at the head of the village where he had carried the woman in the sedan chair three days ago, and the tattered tavern flag snapping and fluttering in the raging winds of the rainstorm. So hungry he could neither sit still nor stand straight, he strode towards the tavern. Since he had been hiring out for the Northeast Gaomi Township Wedding and Funeral Service Company for less than two years, the people around here wouldn’t recognise him. He’d get something to eat and drink, find a way to do what he’d come to do, then slip into the sorghum fields, like a fish in the ocean, and swim far away.
At this point in his ruminations, he headed west, where bilious red clouds turned the setting sun into a blooming peony with a luminous, fearfully bright golden border. After walking west for a while, he turned north, heading straight for the village where Grandma’s nominal husband lived. The fields were still and deserted. During those years, any farmer who had food at home left his field before nightfall, turning the sorghum fields into a haven for bandits.
Village chimneys were smoking by the time he arrived, and a handsome young man was walking down
the street with two crocks of fresh well water over his shoulder, the shifting water splashing over the sides. Yu Zhan’ao darted into the doorway beneath the tattered tavern flag. No inner walls separated the shacks, and a bar made of adobe bricks divided the room in two, the inner half of which was furnished with a brick kang, a stove, and a large vat. Two rickety tables with scarred tops and a few scattered narrow benches constituted the furnishings in the outer half of the room. A glazed wine crock rested on the bar, its ladle hanging from the rim. A fat old man was sprawled on the kang. Yu Zhan’ao recognised him as the Korean dog butcher they called Gook. He had seen Gook once at the market in Ma Hamlet. The man could slaughter a dog in less than a minute, and the hundreds of dogs that lived in Ma Hamlet growled viciously when they saw him, their fur standing straight up, though they kept their distance.
‘Barkeep, a bowl of wine!’ Yu Zhan’ao called out as he sat on one of the benches.
The fat old man didn’t stir, his rolling eyes the only movement on the kang.
‘Barkeep!’ Yu Zhan’ao shouted.
The fat old man pulled back the white dog pelt covering him and climbed down off the kang. Yu Zhan’ao noticed three more pelts hanging on the wall: one green, one blue, and one spotted.
The fat old man took a dark-red bowl out of an opening in the bar and ladled wine into it.
‘What do you have to go with the wine?’ Yu Zhan’ao asked.
‘Dog head!’ the fat old man snarled.
‘I want dog meat!’
‘Dog head’s all I’ve got!’
‘Okay, then.’
The old man removed the lid from the pot, in which a whole dog was cooking.
‘Forget the head,’ Yu Zhan’ao demanded. ‘I want some of that meat.’
Ignoring him, the old man picked up his cleaver and hacked at the dog’s neck, spattering the scalding soup about. Once he’d severed the head, he stuck a metal skewer into it and held it out over the bar. ‘I said I want dog meat!’ Yu Zhan’ao snapped, his ire rising.
The old man threw the dog head down on the bar and said angrily, ‘That’s what I’ve got. Take it or leave it!’
‘Who do you think you’re talking to?’
‘Just sit there like a good little boy!’ the old man warned. ‘What makes you think you can eat dog meat? I’m saving that for Spotted Neck.’
Spotted Neck was a famous bandit chief in Northeast Gaomi Township. Just hearing the name was enough to intimidate Yu Zhan’ao, for Spotted Neck was reputed to be a crack shot. His trademark of firing three shots in a circular motion had earned him the nickname Three-Nod Phoenix. People who knew guns could tell just by listening that Spotted Neck was nearby. Reluctantly Yu Zhan’ao held his tongue and, with the bowl of wine in one hand, reached out and picked up the dog head, then took a spiteful bite out of the animal’s snout. It was delicious, and he was ravenously hungry, so he dug in, eating quickly until the head and the wine were gone. With a final gaze at the bony skull, he stood up and belched.
‘One silver dollar,’ the fat old man said.
‘I’ve only got seven coppers,’ Yu Zhan’ao said, tossing the coins down on the table.
‘I said one silver dollar!’
‘And I said I’ve only got seven coppers!’
‘Do you really expect to eat without paying, boy?’
‘I’ve got seven copper coins and that’s it.’ Yu Zhan’ao stood up to leave, but the fat old man ran around the bar and grabbed him. As they were struggling, a tall, beefy man walked into the bar.
‘Hey, Gook, how come you haven’t lit your lantern?’
‘This guy thinks he can eat without paying!’
‘Cut out his tongue!’ the man said darkly. ‘And light the lantern!’
The fat old man let go of Yu Zhan’ao and walked behind the bar, where he stoked the fire and lit a bean-oil lamp. The glimmering light illuminated the stranger’s dark face. Yu Zhan’ao noticed that he was dressed in black satin from head to toe: a jacket with a row of cloth buttons down the front, a pair of wide-legged trousers tied at the ankles with black cotton straps, and black, double-buckled cloth shoes. His long, thick neck had a white spot on it the size of a fist. This, Yu Zhan’ao thought to himself, must be Spotted Neck.
Spotted Neck sized up Yu Zhan’ao, then stuck out his left hand and rested three fingers on his forehead. Yu Zhan’ao looked at him curiously.
Spotted Neck shook his head disapprovingly. ‘Not a bandit?’
‘I’m a sedan bearer for the service company.’
‘So you make your living with a pole,’ Spotted Neck said derisively. ‘Interested in eating fistcakes with me?’
‘No,’ Yu Zhan’ao replied.
‘Then get the hell out of here. You’re still young, so I’ll let you keep your tongue for kissing women! Go on, and watch what you say.’
Yu Zhan’ao backed out of the tavern, not sure whether he was angry or scared. He had grudging respect for the way Spotted Neck carried himself, but not to the exclusion of loathing.
Born into poverty, Yu Zhan’ao had lost his father when he was just a boy. So he and his mother had eked out a living by tending three mou – less than half an acre – of miserable land. His uncle, Big Tooth Yu, who dealt in mules and horses, had occasionally helped mother and son financially, but not all that often.
Then, when he was thirteen, his mother began an affair with the abbot at Tianqi Monastery. The well-to-do monk often brought rice and noodles over, and every time he came, Yu Zhan’ao’s mother sent the boy outside. Flames of anger raged inside him as sounds of revelry emerged from behind the closed door, and he could barely keep from torching the house. By the time he was sixteen, his mother was seeing the monk so frequently that the village was buzzing. A friend of his, Little Cheng the blacksmith, made him a short sword, with which he murdered the monk one drizzly spring night beside Pear Blossom Creek, named for the trees that lined it. They were in bloom on that wet night, blanketing the area with their delicate fragrance.
Granddad fled the village after the incident, taking odd jobs and finally getting hooked on gambling. Over time his skills improved, until the copper coins that passed through his hands stained his fingers green. Then, when Nine Dreams Cao, whose favourite pastime was nabbing gamblers, became magistrate of Gaomi County, he was arrested for gambling in a graveyard, given two hundred lashes with a shoe sole, forced to wear a pair of pants with one red leg and one black one, and sentenced to sweeping the streets of the county town for two months. When he’d completed his sentence he wandered into Northeast Gaomi Township, where he hired out to the service company. Upon learning that, after the death of the monk, his mother had hanged herself from the door frame, he went back one night to take a last look around. Some time later, the incident with my grandma occurred.
After walking outside, Yu Zhan’ao went into the sorghum field. He could see the dim lantern light in the tavern as he waited, following the progress of the new moon across the sky lit up with bright stars. Cool dew dripped from the sorghum stalks; cold air rose from the ground beneath him. Late that night he heard the tavern door creak open, flooding the night with lantern light. A fat figure hopped into the halo of light, looked around, then went back inside. Yu Zhan’ao could tell it was the dog butcher. After the man had gone back inside, the bandit Spotted Neck darted out of the door and was quickly swallowed up by shadows. The fat old man closed the door and blew out the lantern, leaving the tattered flag above his tavern to flutter in the starlight as though calling to lost spirits.
As the bandit walked down the road, Yu Zhan’ao held his breath and didn’t move a muscle. Spotted Neck chose a place right in front of him to take a piss; the foul odour hit Yu Zhan’ao full in the face. With his hand on his sword, he was thinking it would be so easy to put an end to this famous bandit chief. His muscles tensed. But then he had second thoughts. He had no grudge against Spotted Neck, who was a thorn in the side of County Magistrate Nine Dreams Cao, the man who had given Yu Zhan’ao two hundred
lashes with a shoe sole. That was reason enough to spare Spotted Neck. But he was pleased to think I could have killed the famous bandit chief Spotted Neck if I’d wanted to.
Spotted Neck never learned of this brush with death, nor did he imagine that within two years he would die stark-naked in the Black Water River at the hands of this same young fellow. After relieving himself, he hitched up his pants and walked off.
Yu Zhan’ao jumped to his feet and walked into the sleeping village, stepping lightly so as not to awaken the dogs. When he reached the Shans’ gate, he held his breath as he familiarised himself with his surroundings. The Shan family lived in a row of twenty buildings, divided into two compounds by an interior wall and surrounded by an outer wall with two gates. The distillery was in the eastern compound, while the family lived in the western compound, in which there were three side rooms on the far edge. There were also three side rooms on the edge of the eastern compound, which served as bunkhouses for the distillery workers. In addition, a tent in the eastern compound accommodated a large millstone and the two big black mules that turned it. Finally, there were three connecting rooms at the southern edge of the eastern compound with a single door facing south. That was where the wine was sold.
Yu Zhan’ao couldn’t see over the wall, so he quickly scaled it, making scraping noises that woke the dogs on the other side, who began to bark loudly. After retreating about half the distance an arrow flies, he hunkered down in the square where the Shans dried their sorghum. He needed a plan. The pleasant aroma from a pile of sorghum husks and another of leaves caught his attention. Kneeling down beside the dry husks, he took out his stone and flint, and lit them. But no sooner had they ignited than he had another idea, and he smothered the flames with his hands. He walked over to the pile of leaves, some twenty paces distant, and set fire to it. Less compact than the husks, they would burn more quickly and be easier to extinguish. On that windless night, the Milky Way stretched across the sky, surrounded by thousands of twinkling stars; flames quickly leaped into the air, lighting up the village as though it were daytime.